Family name origins & meanings
- English : from Middle English wild ‘wild’, ‘uncontrolled’ (Old English wilde), hence a nickname for a man of violent and undisciplined character, or a topographic name for someone who lived on a patch of overgrown uncultivated land.
- English : habitational name from a place named Wyld, as for example in Berkshire and Dorset, both named from Old English wil ‘trap’, ‘snare’.
- German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) : cognate of 1, from Middle High German wilde, wilt, German wild ‘wild’, also used in the sense ‘strange’, ‘foreign’, and therefore in some cases a nickname for an incomer.